When a shopping centre was voted one of the most disabled-friendly in the region, Sutton Coldfield Observer feature writer Ben Bentley had to go to find out why.
Jumping into a motorised buggy, he braved the sniggers to find out about life from a new perspective.

The world from a wheelchair is a very different world altogether.

The first thing you notice is the way people treat you. For a start, they flash you sympathy smiles and call you “love” a lot.

They are quick, too, to leap to your rescue – sometimes too quick.

No sooner had I entered one store than not one but two sales assistants had assumed award-winning embodiments of their job descriptions. They were Samaritans supreme and I felt like dishing out gold stars.

I also felt a bit of a fraud. Would they have fussed and fawned over my choice of chamois leather if I’d have been on foot?

I coughed up for my chamois, popped it into the buggy’s ample shopping basket and glided out of the shop.

I had expected more sniggering. But as far as I could tell, only a couple of youths sniggered at me. At least I think they were sniggering at me.

They could have been sniggering at something else entirely, but I wanted to challenge them. Being in a buggy makes a man prickly.

I had taken to my Shopmobility machine like a duck to water and was now trundling around town like a veteran.

I found the Gracechurch Centre and the shops themselves very wheelchair-friendly.

The loos in the Gracechurch withstood the test too. I liked them but it was time to press on.

I left the centre and ran into my first problem.

In the Parade I asked for the menswear department at a High Street chain store and was politely and apologetically told it was on the first floor.

Oh. Can I use the lift then, I asked.

“Sorry, we’ve only got the stairs. If there’s something you want I can fetch it for you,” she said, helpfully.

I felt like staring up at the ceiling, activating my x-ray eyes and saying: “Those trousers up there next to the accessories – have you got them in blue?”

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